Welcome to On Sunday Morning. I’m the voice behind the blog and the person behind the camera. I’m an eager explorer, wannabe writer, capable chef, creative conversationalist, aging athlete, and proficient photographer. Queer in its original meaning is an apt adjective to describe me. I even have a day job working in healthcare. Social media is making us sad; let’s go for a walk somewhere together or trade tales around a campfire.
"I'm a big believer in winging it. I'm a big believer that you're never going to find perfect city travel experience or the perfect meal without a constant willingness to experience a bad one. Letting the happy accident happen is what a lot of vacation itineraries miss, I think, and I'm always trying to push people to allow those things to happen rather than stick to some rigid itinerary."
This is the 4th post in the series From Trainee to Volunteer [See the others here: Swearing in, Site, and Goals]. This one is all about expectations. During PST and even before, Peace Corps tell its trainees not to have expectations because whatever expectations you may have [good or bad] will not be met. Come into service with a blank slate so to speak, and you’ll have a chance to mitigate disappointments.
BUT…
Back home, my jobs had clear expectations, and there was an accepted ways of doing things. Be at work on time [call if you are going to be late], take care of assigned patients/customers, don’t be a smart ass, and don’t kill anyone. You know, the basics. How exactly said job was accomplished was generally left to me, and as long as I didn’t break any rules [or laws for that matter], I was generally left alone to do said job, and ask for help when needed.
Peace Corps jobs are a little different.
One month in and I still haven’t met the boss. I don’t know who he is. We met once at the supervisor conference we had in training. I still don’t have a schedule or any semblance of a schedule. I don’t know when ‘work’ starts. I’ve shown up at 7am and have been late and shown up at 8a and been early. I still don’t know what I am supposed to be doing or how to do it. Oh yes, I have my site goals, but without support and honestly without a plan those are just ideas.
My assigned counterpart doesn’t show up to work a lot of the time which leaves me to either sit in the office, go home, or just find something to do. I’ve been ‘finding something to do’, but when I mentioned this to PC HQ, I was told to ‘not be so flexible’. It’s damn near impossible to co-create, co-teach, co-plan, co-present, co-anything when the person you are supposed to be co-ing is unreliable [PC’s new mantra is Co-co-co… We should never be doing any projects on our own; every project needs to have a counterpart… something about fostering sustainability and having local-level buy-in so when I leave, the project continues on…]
Integration
During the first three months, the focus is on ‘integration’. Integration includes meeting neighbors, establishing a house, getting comfortable in said home, learning more Kinyarwanda, basically allowing the community to ‘see me.’ Peace Corps describes my job as to be seen. And for an introvert like me, being seen is hard. Talking to strangers in a language I don’t have full mastery of is hard. Meeting and greeting people is hard.
Just out for a stroll…looking to meet people
I set little goals for myself each day. Some days it’s ‘go to the AM meeting at the health center. [Even though there’s a 99% chance that I won’t understand most of what is said and isn’t applicable to me]. Walk across the street and talk to my neighbor for 3-5 minutes [this is cheating because we talk in German most of the time]. Go to the market and buy some things. [I now have an egg guy and a tomato lady that seem nice and don’t try to rip me off]. Talk to the HC staff. Sit outside [weather permitting] and cook, or wash dishes or do laundry…
It doesn’t seem like much, but some days it’s exhausting. Usually on Saturdays I don’t leave my house. [I love Saturdays]. I do laundry, cook, and fetch water, but I don’t often leave the front gates. Previous and current volunteers tell me that going slowly in the first few months are the best approach. Show up, be available, and be friendly. If I can do that, I will have a successful service.
PC | Rwanda is trying something new with our cohort of Health volunteers [He10] called site goals. In theory, PC and Health center staff work together to create site goals prior to a volunteer’s arrival. Once again, in theory, this gives the volunteer a little more direction on where the PCV should be focusing his/her time. Site goals are developed to be completed over a period of 6+ years using 3 volunteers total. Volunteer 1[He10] is the plan/lay ground work person. Volunteer 2 [He12] is the carry out the plan person and volunteer 3 [He14] is the wrap up person. In theory, after 6 years the site will ‘graduate’ and no longer need a PCV.
Like I said, all this is great in theory, but putting it in practice is another beast entirely. For example, I am the forth volunteer at my site. In theory my site should have ‘graduated’ already. People here are somewhat used to having a volunteer around doing various projects. They are used to telling a PCV what they’d like to have. Then the PCV working on it either by education, tangible building projects, or receiving a grant. Site goals create some issues with that.
Site Goals
For example, my site goals include reducing childhood malnutrition to 0%. The second goal is to increase women delivering babies at the health center from 15% to 50%. However, villagers have different goals. When interviewed both the staff and some of the inhabitants of the villages, said that bad hygiene practices/lack access to clean water is a more pressing issue than women having babies at home. Health center workers report malaria is a bigger an issue than women having babies at home.
It’s hard enough to convince people that have limited access to water that washing hands is important let alone to convince a women in labor to walk up to 2 hours to the health center to give birth, stay for about 24 hours, and then walk back 2 hours post-partum while carrying a newborn. If I were in their place, I wouldn’t do it. So nutrition, hygiene, and malaria are what I’ll be working on. He12 and He14 can tackle the women giving birth at the HC issue.
So, while PC has their goals, I have mine, and they have absolutely nothing to do with PC’s site goals. I’ve identified 5 goals I’d like to work on in the next two years, and to be honest, they’d be the same goals I’d work on back in America. Instead of NEW YEAR’S resolutions, think more along the lines of NEW LIFE resolutions.
Goal 1
Lose weight. Lack of motivation to exercise combined with unhealthy eating practices [I really don’t enjoy cooking and eating meals on the go] and schedules all over the place [should I eat a full meal at midnight? Or what about breakfast at 8am even though I’ve just worked 12+ hours] has led to an unhealthy weight gain. Add that to the 50 pounds I gained while on high dose steroids for six months, and you have a chunky Michelle. I’ve already lost about 10kg in the 3.5 months I’ve been here. I just need to keep it up and keep it going.
Goal 1.2: Commit to an exercise program that will be possible to maintain whether I’m in my village, my country house, or traveling back and forth to work/school every day. Right now, that’s yoga, and while I’m still finding it difficult to make it a daily habit, I am finding it easier to start back when I miss a couple of days. #progressnotprefection.
I can no longer wear those pants without them literally falling off, and that shirt has room enough in it for a small animal.
Goal 2
Learn to cook. Well. While I can cook, and have no doubt that I can cook well enough not to starve, with [extremely] limited options for dining out, I need to learn to cook a variety of things with very limited ingredients. Learning not to rely on quick cook foods, frozen dinners, and snacks is like rewiring my brain. And since my primary goal here is nutrition, I should be [at least] a better example. To that end, one of my fellow PCVs is teaching me how to cook all sorts of interesting things… all from scratch… all from common ingredients that we find in the market. We meet periodically to buy fresh ingredients from the market and whip up something delicious while watching a movie. These recipes are featured in posts called Cooking in the Corps.
a pot of beans anyone? As a native to the southeastern US, this is considered comfort food. Also easily attainable I Rwanda.
Goal 3
Apply to NP school. I’ve only found one school that advertises the degree I want [dual FNP/PMHNP], but it is possible to combine programs at other school to get the same program offered at the one school. To this end, I am taking the GRE at home in February. Some schools require it; others don’t, but it will be easier to take it in the US versus trying to schedule it in Rwanda. At present I have a list of five [with two others in reserve that only offer the FNP portion so I’d have to apply to a different school to do a post-masters PMH] schools I plan to apply to [I can’t afford any more on a Peace Corps’ budget] They are as follows [in no particular order]: UTHSC [the only school I’ve found that offers the dual program], UT-Knoxville [the only school on the list that offers a Coverdell scholarship], USC [they have both degree programs; they don’t have the dual degree as an option], Frontier Nursing University, Eastern Kentucky University [both have both options available; neither have a dual program], and the two schools in reserve are both South Carolina schools that only offer the FNP degree [meaning I’d have to go to a second school for the PMH degree] Clemson University and Francis Marion University. My goal is to start no later than Spring Term 2021.
Goal 4
Learn photoshop. I have a copy of Photoshop Elements downloaded on my computer. I barely know how to do much more than crop. I’ve got nearly 50000 photos on my hard drive that need editing so I’ve got a lot of material on which to practice.
Sub-goal 2: Edit and organize said photos
Sub-goal 3: Re-design the blog and ensure every post has at least one photo in it.
Goal 5
Strengthen relationships. This one is kind of esoteric. However, there are 2 [very important] outliers, the people important in my life today are people I’ve met in the last five years. These are the people I call when I’m down. People I WhatsApp with regularly. And the people who send me mail and care packages. These are the people I draw strength from when I think about quitting; and the people I don’t want to disappoint. This also applies to PC friendships too. I’ve identified a couple of others who have a similar outlook on Peace Corps service and life. We contact each other weekly/daily about how life is going at site, what’s coming up, just life in general. Facebook and other social media apps make keeping in contact with others a whole lot easier than it was say 1998… I don’t think I would have survived PC circa late 90’s/early 00’s when technology was available, but oh so hard to access… especially in the developing world.
I touched on the fact that I wasn’t altogether happy with my site back when we had the announcement. I didn’t pitch a fit, cry, or really display any type of emotion, but the fact was nearly everything I had said in the interview concerning site placement, I ended up with the opposite.
I wanted to be a ‘first generation’ volunteer; instead I’m the third at this site, the last having been a Peace Corps’ poster child. [The only poster I’m ever going to end up on is a ‘Wanted’ poster].
I wanted to be rural. While I do live in a rural village per se, I can, and in fact do, walk to Rwanda’s second largest city. There’s pizza and ice cream and Chinese food. There’s a university and an arboretum. Connectivity leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s a small inconvenience.
Huye has legit coffee milkshakes that are worth hanging around for
I wanted to be in the mountains, near one of the national parks. I’m near exactly zero mountains and the closest park in over three hours away. I have a lot of hills, some very large hills to be exact, but it’s not like being in the mountains. It’s like being in the Midwest; you’re not exactly at sea level, but not really in the mountain and both the mountains and sea are quite a long way away.
Site visit was rough. There was a food issue [there wasn’t any], a bathroom issue [missing keys meant I was to share with everyone else], a work issue [what the hell am I supposed to be doing], a counterpart issue [he took me to bars after I said I don’t drink and left me to find my way home in the rapidly approaching darkness], and a supervisor issue [when I called PC about the lack of food, he became offended and probably embarrassed—I haven’t seen him since]. Getting home was no picnic as I’d agreed to meet some others and while I was at the bus station by 8am, no one else was. One person of the four showed and we were on our way at 10:30, a full two hours behind schedule.
The day went from bad to worse and at 10p when I crawled into my bed back in Rwamagana, I wanted nothing to do with anyone.
Sometimes I am amazed at my own stubbornness and why I didn’t decide to GTFO after that week from hell, I’ll never know, but here I am, a full month later, still in the Peace Corps, still at my site, still trying to figure out what to do.
My first week at site was challenging, and to be fair, I’d guess most people’s week was challenging as well. However, in addition to starting a new job and meeting new people, and figuring out what it is exactly that I am supposed to be doing, I had the challenges of having both an absent boss and counterpart. Throw in that I still struggle a lot with Kinyarwanda, it made for a very long week [even though I only ‘worked’ four days].
I’m trying. That’s all I can do.
Do laundry while its sunny; rain clouds blow in a soon as it’s hung up to dry. An apt metaphor for how things are going.
Welcome to my first post in the series called Cooking in the Corps. By the end of the series, there will be [hopefully] a collection of 27 [see what I did there] recipes that I personally cooked in my kitchen either on the gas stove or the imbabura. A couple of these are of my own creation, but most are modified versions of dishes my fellow PCV Taylor taught me to cook.
Spaghetti with tomato sauce was my first meal at site. We were installed on a Thursday and this was Thursday night’s dinner [and Friday’s lunch]. Once the gas stove was set-up and tested, and once Peace Corps’ left, the first order of business, even before unpacking suitcases, making my bed, or any other essential task, was to fetch water and set about making the spaghetti sauce. I’d planned this meal from Kigali and acquired the vegetables needed while there so that there would be no difficulty in finding what I need. A hungry Michelle is not a happy Michelle and hungry Michelle makes snap decisions/judgments that a satiated Michelle would not make.
Tools Needed:
2 cooking pots
Non-stick skillet [or frying pan]
A heat source [I used a gas stove]
A sharp knife
A cutting board [preferable]
A stirring spoon of some sort
Ingredients:
1 kg of fresh tomatoes [diced]
1 onion [diced]
1 green pepper [diced]
6 cloves of garlic [diced]
1 small can of tomato paste
Spaghetti noodles [only what you can use at one time; noodles DO NOT keep well overnight]
Spices to taste [I used salt, pepper, oregano, and rosemary]
½ L of water
Bread
Parmesan cheese [if you’ve got it]
Butter or margarine
Red wine [about ½ cup if you have it, but totally not necessary]
Tomatoes, onion, bell pepper, and tomato paste… Add seasoning to your liking and you’ve got homemade spaghetti sauce… much healthier than anything from a can or jar
Directions:
Turn gas on and pour water in pot. Dice all vegetables and add to water. Add 2/3 of the garlic to vegetables. Add tomato paste to pot. Stir. Add about a tablespoon of salt and a teaspoon each of pepper, oregano, and rosemary. [Add more if the flavor isn’t to your liking]. Bring sauce to boil and reduce heat. Allow sauce to simmer for 15-20 minutes until water cooks out.
Bell peppers and onions cooking together before adding tomatoes
While sauce is simmering, add water to another pot. Break spaghetti in half and add to boiling water. Cook approximately 7-10 minutes until noodles are done. Drain water.
Pour noodles on plate.
Take one loaf of bread and cut lengthwise. Slather in butter and add garlic.
On Tuesday August 14, 2018 despite any reservations anyone may or may not have had, I, along with 22 others was sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer in Rwanda representing cohort Health 10.
I wore a fancy dress. I put on make-up. I danced on live TV. I listened to speeches given by my fellow trainees/volunteers, the Charge d’Affairs, the Country Director, the Program Manager, the director of Training, a Ministry of Health official, and a tuitulaire. Some speeches were in English; some were in Kinyarwanda, and around noon, after starting nearly an hour behind schedule, I stood, raised my right hand, and swore to protect the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.
It’s the same oath everyone who works for the government takes including the US Military. The military was never intended to be my career path, but in taking the same oath that several friends and family have taken, I felt a momentary surge of patriotic pride.
After becoming an official volunteer, we munched on snacks and Fanta, and mingled with the people there. All in all, it was one of the happier days since arriving in Rwanda.
All good things must come to an end, and around 1:30 we were escorted to immigration to get our Rwandan ID cards made. These cards mark our official residency status and in theory gives up Rwandan citizen status especially at places that charge a higher price for foreign tourists [Rwandan national parks, I’m looking at you].
On Tuesday evening, after the ceremony and after immigration, nearly everyone went out for drinking and dancing. I know myself well enough to know that would have been a mistake on my part, so I spent a quiet evening at home—home, one again, being our Catholic nunnery. Before anyone starts to feel sorry for me for ‘missing out’ on anything, having the nunnery to myself was pretty awesome. I had unlimited food and drink [I think I had 5 fantas and at least 2 plates of food], I was able to take a hot shower that lasted longer than 5 minutes [seriously, only my second since leaving America. The first one being at the PC infirmary a mere two weeks prior]. Without any competing devices, I was able to use the internet to my hearts’ content, download books to my Kindle, movies to my hard drive, and even video chat on WhatsApp. I had a perfectly enjoyable evening doing the things I love with the people I love, and didn’t suffer the hangover that most of my cohort had.
Thanks to a Catholic holiday, we had a free day on Wednesday saving the actual moving until Thursday, and thankfully, most stores are not Catholic and were open for business. I’m not a huge shopper, but I did enjoy hanging out at the bookstore with the rooftop bar, getting my gas stove and a few other home goods, and going to the grocery store getting some food favorites in preparation for my first weekend alone.
Thursday morning involved moving all the stuff that had been stored in a room up to the parking lot to be loaded in to the moving vehicle. I was as surprised as anyone when everything was loaded, and two volunteers’ stuff for two years fit in one Toyota pick-up truck. Good byes were said; tears were shed, and off we went [I admit to remaining mostly stoic until one of my Northern friends hugged me and had tears in her eyes. Then my eyes did the same]. With bananas and bread in hand [who can eat breakfast at an emotional time like this] plus a couple bottles of water, my fellow volunteer and I set off to the South.
I still can’t believe nothing fell off the truck while we we’re moving
We dropped her off first, and I was a little envious of her site. A proper house with a small front porch, right in town, with neighbors for visiting. Her HC happened to be a 15 minute or so walk which is just about perfect. [I can hear the babies being vaccinated from inside my house].
Somewhere between her site an mine
After she was ‘installed’, we bumped along back roads for about an hour until we reached the town of Nyanza, and the dirt roads once again turned to pavement. Another 30-45 minutes later, we pulled up to my house. Things were unloaded; the gas stove was tested [it worked!], and suddenly I was alone… truly alone for the first time in quite some time.
I had planned for this eventuality, had ample international phone credit and data, and set about to making my first meal in my ‘new home.’ [It was delicious]. I unpacked a few things, hung some wall decor, made my bed [pulling out my quilt for the first time], and listened to some tunes. Later on, I called some friends. Past experiences have taught me that I don’t make the best decisions when I’m either hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, and on my first night here, I was two of the four.
First meal at the new homestead… Moving all that stuff in the house is hard work
On Friday, I made my way down to the city, to get a few more food items, go to the bank, meet some current volunteers, have some Chinese food, and start to figure out how all this works.
I am in a small village in rural Rwanda. Doing things the way I am used to doing is no longer an option.
On our second day in Rwanda, our group of 24 trainees was split into six groups, and I sat beside three other trainees watched our Language and Cultural Facilitators, act out a short dialogue.
They stood a few feet apart, facing away from each other, then turned around and began to walk slowly with their heads down, as if they were walking along a street. Then they make eye contact with each other and one, and upon doing so, one of them breaks into a wide smile and exclaimed “Muraho!” to his freind. On cue, after hearing this, the other also grinned and returned the word.
“Muraho!”
The dialogue then came to a quick end. Upon ending, each of our language teachers looked at our group inquisitively. “Iki ni iki?”. They continued to stare at us, in silence, waiting for someone to respond.
I stared right back not knowing what a ichie or a nichie was. I’m a little unusual in the fact that silence does not bother me. I can sit comfortably in a room full of people and never say a word. I attribute that to my psych background.
Our teachers, still smiling, said nothing but went back and repeated the little sketch, beat for beat. After saying Muraho! to each other again, they repeated their question: “Iki ni iki?”. The lightbulb then managed to click in someone’s [read: not my] mind. “Oh! They are just asking us what Muraho means.
Someone [read: not me] said “It means hello!”. We all nodded with recognition. Oh, so this is how language class in Peace Corps was going to go. I am so fucked…
“Yego!”, they said laughing.
As they continued, some of the smaller and more basic words were written down on flip chart paper [I never knew I could hate an object so incredibly much, but I’ve come to despise flip-chart paper], with their English definitions so we could reference them consistently.
Yego means yes.
Oya means no.
Iki means what.
Murabyumva means, do you understand?
Iki ni iki means, what is it/this?
On this first day, our little group buzzed with excitement. The teachers continued to act out small dialogues in lieu of telling us the words by didactic translation. They waved to each other and walked away, saying to each other “Mwirirgwe!”
Someone [again, read: not me] blurted out ‘goodbye?’ and correct guesses would be rewarded with an enthusiastic “Yego!” and wrong guesses earned a soft and disappointing “Oya…”.
“Amakuru?” means, how are you? We figured out slowly.
“Ni meza” means, I’m good.
“Wowe?” means, and yourself?
banana–a universal word in the Western hemisphere… In Rwanda it’s umuneke
One. Month. Later.
I have Double Language today. Double Language. Four straight hours. No snacks. Can’t I just get food poisoning for the day?
On a random morning about one month in, I thought this to myself as I walk to language class. The thought rattles around my mind with every step down the road. DoubleLanguage. DoubleLanguage.
No matter how many times I’ve mentioned that I’d prefer both fruit AND eggs for breakfast, I rarely get both. Some days it’s one or the other, and thankfully not all that often, it’s neither. Today, it just a piece of stale bread. Walking to my language teacher’s class, I kept thinking ‘no snacks today because double language…I need snacks because the stale sweet bread I got for breakfast just isn’t cutting it.‘
In the one short month I have been here, I have lost nearly 15 pounds and I have learned one thing: I need protein in order to function. And I need lots of protein to function optimally. And my Rwandan diet, has been lacking protein at almost every meal. As a result, I feel sluggish most of the time and randomly emotional. As every American knows, BREAKFAST is the most important meal of the day and why Rwandans think one piece of bread and tea is a proper breakfast is beyond me.
But here I am.
On the day with double language, my breakfast is stale sweet bread. And water. Prisoners get better food than this.
But like the semi time-conscious American I am, I arrive for DoubleLanguage right at 7:45am.
OK 7:50
I am here because the schedule says to be, and despite my proclivities for being a free-spirit and not planning anything, one thing I am not is late. At least not in Rwanda. Additionally, Peace Corps emphasizes in our training sessions to ‘Respect Time‘; however, none of my classmates nor the teacher are here. So I sit, in a plastic chair and nibble on my stale sweet bread, and drink my water…
Best to fuel up, I mumble to no one in particular.
By 8:00, my other classmates have arrived and my teacher begins asking questions. All in Kinyarwanda, of course.
The teacher asks ‘What did you eat for breakfast?’
I fumble, my brain searching for the right words. Oh…past tense… we haven’t learned that yet. Kurya… the verb for to eat… How do you conjugate it again?
M-fee-tay ke-ke na a-ma-zi….I sputter out and produce said cake and water as evidence that I do in fact HAVE cake and water…not that I was avoiding the question
And this is how every language class goes. We are asked questions. I translate what I think I hear from Kinyarwanda into English in my mind. Then I think of what vocabulary I actually have in order to answer the question, and do I have the ability to conjugate that verb correctly? Once I run through this scenario in my mind, I compose the sentence in Kinyarwanda and then sputter out an answer that could come from a 2-year old child.
Gusa? My teacher asks.
She wants me to expand on that phrase. Make it a sentence or preferably a paragraph.
“Donna-ni-way can-di da-shon-jay”, I answer, with a smirk. I am tired and I am hungry. All day every day, I am tired and hungry. One question down, four hours to go. Class has just begun, and it’s another two hours until there’s a break long enough to get snacks.
I could really go for a fruit salad right about now
Challenges
Not unsurprisingly, learning Kinyarwanda is considerably different from anything I’ve ever tried to learn in my life. I’ve always considered myself ‘decent’ at learning languages. I’m semi-fluent in Spanish and have safely navigated around using Portuguese, French, Romanian, German, and Russian in addition to English and Spanish. But Kinyarwanda is different… just listening to it makes my head spin. I’m six weeks in and I am still very much at an elementary level. I don’t need an exam to tell me that.
My host family has had 8 previous volunteers so they are used to speaking slowly and enunciating words properly and switching to French when I answer their questions with blank stares. Learning a language by immersion is exhausting. It takes a significant amount of mental energy, commitment, and time; and these three things are required every single day. After a long language session, I am exhausted…even more so than days requiring physical labor.
When I hear Kinyarwanda, I have a hard time understanding it. My language progress checks with my teachers also reflect this fact. [Mid LPI result on July 7, I scored Novice-Mid. Final PST LPI on August 7, I’m up to an Intermediate-Low, but don’t worry, we’ll be tested again in three months where I’m sure I’ll have the exact same level, because this language does.not.make.any.sense to me].
Speaking the language is also difficult, although I would argue it is not quite as difficult as listening. This is in large part because as a native English speaker the sentence structures, particularly of questions, are almost entirely backwards. In Kinyarwanda, question words almost always go at the end of sentences.
For instance, “Ukora iki”, means, what do you do?; but literally translates to “You do what?”. It is like that for just about everything. You are here why? This is what? The market is where? In addition to putting question words at the end, adjectives go after nouns; this is similar to Spanish. But when you put these two elements together, it forces your brain into cryptic problem solving mode anytime you have to say a sentence with any more than 5 words.
When I think to myself a moderately detailed sentence like, “What do your American friends like to do?”, my head spins. The question word goes to the end, there are plural words, there are possessive words, there is one adjective. It all goes completely out of what we would consider “order”: Inshuti wawe muri Amerika bakunda gukora iki? That translates literally to: Friends yours in America they like to do what? It’s a difficult puzzle to solve each and every time. Don’t forget to blend Gukora and Iki … or they’ll know you are not native Rwandan.
The words for things, and the lack of words for thing captures stark differences between American and Rwandan culture. There is no word for “Please”. You can just tell people to do things, and it’s not considered rude. At all. As evidenced by all the people coming up to me saying ‘Give me money.’ No please. Just declaring. And I will always think that it is rude. Cultural differences be damned.
Some of my favorite words to say are:
“Umudugudu” which means village. Oo-moo-doo-goo-doo.
‘Abakoreabushake‘ which means volunteers. A-ba-co-re-ra-bu-sha-che.
‘Ikigonderaubuzima’ which means health center post. Ichie-gon-der-a-u-bu-zima.
‘Nka Kibazo’ which means no problem, don’t worry about it… Naa che-ba-zo.
‘Other duties as required’… it’s a phrase I’ve always hated–that very vague part of the job description where an employer can ask to to do almost anything and before you can say ‘no’ they come back with ‘other duties as required’.
As it pertains to a Peace Corps Maternal-Child Health volunteer, other duties as required means building your own hand-washing station, pooping in a hole, bathing with cold water in a series of carefully coordinated steps, doing laundry in a series of buckets, learning a traditional dance, bargaining for every franc, hugging small children on a daily basis, and learning a language so foreign from the Latin based languages I’ve previously learned.
Site announcement day
After much [much, much, much, MUCH] anticipation, and at least one delay, site announcement day finally arrived, and what can I say, at last I know where I will be living and working for the next two years. I know many of you have been waiting for this as well, but I’ll keep you in suspense for a few minutes more. Site placement is a big deal. A volunteer’s site means not only the physical location of their house, but also their health center, their community, their PCV neighbors, how far away from pizza they live, etc, and it will shape their lives in so many way for the next two years, though possibly much longer. While I didn’t have a specific location in mind, I did have a couple of preferences: 1. To be rural; mountains would be nice, but mainly I wanted to have one of the 1000 hills of Rwanda to myself, 2. be the first volunteer at the site, and 3. if at all possible, I wanted to work at a Catholic Health Center with nuns. While it was next to impossible to remain neutral, all I could do was trust the process.
So where will I call home?
Peace Corps’ says that sites are not assigned at random, but at times it certainly feels that way. While PC sites are assigned based on based on each volunteer’s interests and preferences, their skills, strengths, and weaknesses, and ultimately where the staff thinks each volunteer can make the greatest impact.
So finally the day arrived. We had morning language class, late morning sex-ed [we finished early and had a 3 hour wait for the officials to get to the training center from Kigali. We got cinnamon rolls, drank milk tea, and played Banana-grams. The clock seemed to go in reverse. Then finally, finally we went out back, and as our name was called, we had to find our health center on a map, and stick a pin in it.
So where am I going? Drum roll, please………
** Huye [Butare] in the Southern province.
I’ll admit that at first I was not happy with my site placement. At all. Butare is the 2nd largest city in Rwanda, and I am a 45 min-1 hour walk to the city or a quick moto ride. My cachement area is the largest of my cohort coming in at a whopping 35700+ people. Not small. Not rural. No hill to myself. Not the first volunteer, and no nuns. For a good 24 hours, I was NOT HAPPY, but then I realized that my situation has an upside. The bus to Kigali is a nice Express bus with assigned seating… No squeeze bus required. Living in the south means the chance I will vomit on public transportation is minimal. Living near Butare means there is pizza and ice cream and a hipster coffee shop. It means electricity. Replacing a volunteer means I already have a couch and some home goods so less money that I will have to spend to make the house ‘homey’. I’m still slightly jealous of the two who are living on Lake Kivu, and the ones in the mountains, and the ones with small cachement areas, but it is what it is, and I’ll adjust.
**Per Peace Corps Safety and Security Policy, I’m not allowed to say in the blog exactly where my site is so I will have to be fairly vague in my location description.
This post is a little different than previous posts as I am currently visiting my future home. I thought I would quantify my experience in Rwanda thus far.
Numbers 0-5
0: Number of pants that I brought that still fit. Note: I still wear all the pants that are too big so my outfits these days are quite comical. Also the number of things i have accidentally dropped into the latrine. Thankfully.
1: Number of kittens I’ve seen. Also number of kittens that currently live at my house. Also the number of times I have eaten fish. Also the number of Chinese Restaurants in Huye.
2: Number of volunteers from South Carolina in my cohort. Also number of volunteers from South Carolina that I know.
3: Number of ikitenge fabrics I’ve bought and have had made into clothing. Also the average number of liters of water I drink daily.
5: KM….Distance to Huye/Butare, the second largest city in Rwanda. I’m about to become a city girl.
Numbers 6-10
6: number of pizza bites I ate at our last training meeting. They were delicious.
8. Number of times I have eaten spaghetti with tomato sauce after I explained that I don’t just like plain noodles. Also the number of people in my cohort also placed in the south.
10: number of kilograms I’ve list since arriving in Rwanda. This is not surprising as my activity level has increased and my caloric intake had decreased.
Numbers 15-100
15: % number of women who currently seeking prenatal care at my health centre.
23: Number of people remaining in our cohort. One person left about two weeks ago.
49: Days since I left South Carolina.
86: Currently the number of children that suffer from malnutrition registered at my health center. My goal is to reduce it to 0.
101-1000
148: Number of current Peace Corps volunteers in Rwanda serving in health and education. The distribution is about 2/3 education and 1/3 health.
~500: Words. My approximate Kinyarwanda vocabulary. This is a gross estimate and may be more or less.
725+/-: Days remaining in the Peace Corps assuming things go as planned.
1001 and more
36700+/-: The number of people in my cachement area. A cachement area is the geographical area a specific health center serves. My cachement area is the largest in Rwanda.
42000: Rwandan francs I receive every two weeks. It’s approximately $40 and I use it to buy lunch everyday as well as fabric/clothing, phone credit, data package, and anything else that pops up.
Ahhhhh, PST…Pre-Service Training. I refer to it as Boot Camp, and our instructors take every opportunity to re-enforce that yes, as of now, we are just trainees. Yes, the Peace Corps is about as far from the Army [or other military branch] as imaginable, but this 10 week period of training is very much the same. The preparation was even a little bit similar. I cut off 10 inches of hair, paired down my wardrobe, started doing a lot more walking, and evaluated and re-evaluated each item that made it in to the suitcase[s] . OK, not exactly the same as the Army….
6 days a week, we are in training nearly every daylight hour. We spend between 2 and 6 hours, depending on the day, learning [and practicing] Kinyarwanda; the remaining class time is learning about the Peace Corps’ mission, health and safety sessions, practical things [like mopping with a squeegee, cleaning shoes, sweeping the grass, and chopping the grass with something reminiscent of a metal hockey stick], the Rwandan Health System, and the government’s initiative to improve children’s health, focusing on the first 1000 days [essentially from conception until age 2—also the reason we are here]. It’s exhausting and I’m in bed nearly every night by 9p [unless there is a soccer match on—then I sacrifice for the greater good].
I’ve recently started doing Yoga again, every morning at 6:30am. My last few months in America, I got sedentary, first sidelined by illness, then a lack of motivation. A few of the other trainees go running; the last time I ran, I broke two bones so I’m starting with Yoga. I don’t want to have to be med-evac’ed before evening becoming an official volunteer. The Kigali marathon is in May each year, and some of the trainees are training for that. I’m focusing on the 10k that is also being held at the same time, and maybe next year, the half marathon [Small goals].
Previous and even current volunteers will tell you that PST is the worst. The 6:30pm curfew. The 6 days a week of classes. The language learning. All of it, combined with the unfamiliar diet, the decrease in calories [especially protein], unfamiliarity of the culture, the inability to do simple things that we’ve all previously done before, having to rely on others for nearly everything, will produce some of the highest highs and lowest lows imaginable. [I spent part of one afternoon crying in a latrine mostly due to lack of food but also being frustrated by the language, and despite several attempts, I. COULD. NOT STOP. Hopefully, this was a one-time meltdown.] And even now, with only four weeks complete, most of our group will say, ‘I cannot wait to be at site [wherever that may be]’. However, we still have six weeks of training remaining until we can take the oath of service, hang out with the ambassador, pretend to be fancy, and be on our own.
I am one of those who anxiously await trading in the (T) for a (V) and finally becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer.
Helpful Peace Corps Acronyms
Like many government organizations, the Peace Corps loves it’s acronyms, so in an attempt to clear things up here is a list of a few of them and their meanings (also I try not to use them exclusively). I’ll update as I learn more:
COS: Close of Service / Completion of Service
ET: Early Termination (Leaving service early, I.E. deciding to terminate service anytime sooner than the COS conference)
HNC: Host Country National
ICT: In-Country Training
IST: In-Service Training
Medevac: Medical Evacuation
NGO: Non-Governmental Organization
OMS: Office of Medical Services
PCMO: Peace Corps Medical Officer/Office
PDO: Pre-Departure Orientation
PCT: Peace Corps Trainee (PCV’s prior to Swearing In)–> what I am currently
PCV: Peace Corps Volunteer
PST: Pre-Service Training
RPCV: Returned Peace Corps Volunteer
VATs: Volunteer Assistant Trainers (Volunteers who help train new volunteers/PCT’s during PST)
Other helpful non-acronyms terms
The HUB: Where most of the PCT classes are held. Additionally, we have language class in small groups at our instructors house.
Staging: When all the new PCT’s meet and receive their pre-departure orientation before flying out to their country of service. Typically lasts 24 to 48 hours.
Swearing in: This is when PCT’s become PCV’s! Happens at the very end of Pre-Service Training, this is when PCT’s agree to uphold the goals and standards of the Peace Corps.
Site: A PCV’s official community where they live and work for their 2 years of service.
I described the process of being matched up with host families as being anxious kitties at the shelter.
Imagine this: You are placed in a room with about 50 people who you do not know, where everyone is speaking a language you do not know. All you can do is listen for your name. And when it is called, you meet up with the representative of the family who will raise you for the next 10 weeks.
I met my Mama, and her first words to me were ‘Parle vous francais’. Sadly I answered ‘un peu’ and thus began the quiet weekend.
You see, this pairing up happened, for us, on Friday, after just two days in Rwanda, and a fledgling vocabulary consisting of ‘Hello, my name is… I am from America’ ‘Good Morning [evening]’ ‘Good Night’ ‘What is your name?’ I’ll admit to being terrified and saying, to myself, ‘what fresh hell have I engaged in now?’
As much as I want to be settled, I selected a few outfits, 5 days’ worth of underwear, two pairs of shoes, all my electronics, and my pillow. I left a lot of my things at the training center and was grateful that I did. My Rwandan family’s house is small, and my room is much smaller than I am accustomed to, and even with my two small bags [think carry-on sized] of clothes and electronics, I have more material things than they do. The Peace Corps’ gave us a 20L jerry-can, a 5L can of water, and rather large water filter. Additionally, we received a bucket, a small cup, and a bottle of bleach. My goods were loaded in a Peace Corps’ truck, I climbed in after Mama, and then we left. Approximately three minutes later, we arrived at my new house for the next 10 weeks.
The quiet weekend began as soon as I set foot in the house. Having exhausted my fledgling Kinyarwanadan vocabulary and not knowing any English, Mama and I didn’t talk. I went about setting up my room, ripping the plastic off my brand new Peace Corps’ provided [twin] mattress, setting up my Peace Corps’ provided water filter, and trying to make my Spartan accommodations as homey as possible [it didn’t work].
After about an hour, I hear a knock on the door, and in accented English, I hear “Michelle, do you eat lice?” Appreciating the English, but not the sentence, I remained silent. Another knock, “Michelle?” I reluctantly opened the door. Greeting me enthusiastically with ‘I am Deborah, your host sister. Mama wants to know if you eat lice?’
It took a few seconds for me to reach back into the dark areas of my brain and remember that sometimes, English as a Second Language learners sometimes mix up Ls and Rs. After remembering that, I replied, “Yes, I eat rice.”
With Deborah’s help, I learned that in Rwanda, I have a 25 year-old brother who live in Kigali [we’ve never met] and that she is Level 2 at the local school [I’m not sure what that means although there are six levels]. There is not Papa, and I know enough to ask, that when someone says someone is not here, don’t ask questions. [Although seeing as how Deborah is 14, it’s impossible that he died in the genocide that occurred in 1994].
The past few weeks of living with my host family has been challenging. Kinyarwanda is a difficult language with a lot of letter combination that my mouth isn’t used to making. While I can memorize words and may even know what someone is asking me, I lack the vocabulary to make a reply. I also lack the grammar skills to formulate my own questions so I rely on using the infinitive form of every verb along with helpers such as I like, I want, I need. It makes me sound [and feel] like a somewhat illiterate 2 year old child.
The family eats foods much different than what I am used to eating, and I don’t think I’ve ever eaten as many vegetables in a two week period in my life. [Although my new strategy of heavily complimenting any food that is remotely ‘American’ seems to be working; I’ve had spaghetti with tomato sauce twice] As a result and with the additional task of walking everywhere, I’ve lost about 10 pounds. This is not a bad thing, and I have more pounds [kilograms?] to go, but it has resulted in none of my pants fitting me anymore.
I expressed my love for tomatoes and sauce on top of spaghetti noodles, and even offered to make some for all
Chores are done differently. I wash my clothes by hand with a bar of soap, and hang them on a clothesline to dry. Cooking is done on a charcoal stove. Grocery shopping is done daily or at minimum every other day, and with a lack of refrigeration, left-overs are just re-boiled the next day.
Integration has been slow for me partly because of my introverted nature, partly because of my acute awareness of my fledgling Kinyarwanda, and partly because of the compactness of my host family. I was thinking I have absolutely nothing in common with these people, and nothing to talk about, but last Wednesday when I inquired about maybe, possibly [ pretty plesase] watching the opening match of the world cup, I was greeted with an enthusiastic ‘YEGO’. You see, Mama is an avid soccer [football] fan, and she was worried that I, being American, wouldn’t be interested. Sitting there in the small living room on Thursday night, huddled around the 13” old-school style TV, watching Russia vs Saudi Arabia with my Rwandan mama, I finally felt at home.
